Let me state from the outset that I have zero interest in awards. While they are an honor when fairly awarded—and it would be fun to have that merit badge in my collection—the reality is that in the big game, Hugos, Nebulae and other awards really mean nothing to the life of a working writer. […]

Up to this point, the High Intensity Writing Workouts have focused largely on characters and dialogue. Characters are the lifeblood of any story. We read for characters. If a writer can get them done correctly—making them believable—then the writer will have a career. What most writers don’t realize is that the worlds we create—no matter […]

Despite the fact that this will be one of the shorter exercises, it’s one of the most important you can use to develop characters and their unique voices. Previously I’ve had you work on dialogue so you could avoid the “he said” tags which make dialogues choppy. By the end of this exercise you’ll understand […]

It’s a bit of a shock, but also kind of fun, to find your Twitter feed blowing up because of a blockbuster announcement. Yesterday the news came out that the first Star Wars™ stand alone movie would be Rogue One. I can’t tell you the thrill that ran through me with the news. I don’t […]

This exercise harkens back to what we covered in High Intensity Writing Workout No. 1. You’ll be using some of the skills you developed there to get through this workout. One “problem area” (to keep the workout metaphor working) for most writers early on in their careers involves tunnel vision. Whether working from notes or […]

One of the goals of any good writing is to pack a lot of information into as few words as possible. The biggest culprit in preventing this is the verb “to be.” The reason is simple: the verb is the lowest-common verb—it applies almost anywhere. But it is weak and flabby and applied too broadly. […]

Because I’ve started teaching online writing classes through Arizona State University’s Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, I’ve been having to put together exercises to help students understand and master a variety of techniques. One of the things I’m pretty much death on is using he said/she said or their variants in dialogue. I […]